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Fortune
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What is Fortune?

Fortune as a subject of study spans an unusually wide range of academic disciplines, from literature and philosophy to business, economics, and political science. The concept carries multiple meanings — material wealth, luck, fate, and the unpredictable forces that shape human outcomes — which makes it fertile ground for analysis across many courses. Works like Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince treat fortune as a political and philosophical force that leaders must learn to confront, while literary texts such as Oedipus Tyrannus and The Beaux' Stratagem dramatize how chance and circumstance overturn human plans. Business contexts, including case studies of companies like Harley-Davidson, frame fortune in terms of risk, strategic decision-making, and the role of past actions in shaping future success or failure.

The papers collected under this topic reflect a genuinely diverse set of approaches. Some take a literary or philosophical angle, examining how characters and thinkers have understood fate, agency, and the reversals of luck. Others adopt a business case-study approach, analyzing how organizations navigate uncertainty and change. Still others engage with financial systems, American politics, and media figures, treating fortune as a lens for understanding power, money, and social mobility in real-world settings.

A strong essay on fortune begins by defining which dimension of the concept it addresses — luck, wealth, fate, or strategic risk — and commits to that focus throughout. Evidence drawn from close textual analysis, historical examples, or concrete business cases carries the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating fortune as a vague background theme rather than developing a specific, arguable claim about how it operates within the chosen subject.

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Essay Undergraduate
Robinson Crusoe and Individualism in Daniel Defoe's Novel
The adage "no man is an island" always holds true because humankind has always been a social being. By belonging to a group or society, individuals are expected to abide by the collective norms and behaviors thereto.
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Paper Doctorate
Appearance, Reality, and Power in Machiavelli's The Prince
The Prince was written by a career politician named Niccolo Machiavelli in the context of 16th Century Italy's shifting political landscape. Machiavelli's ideas were new in that they divorced politics from morality. In addition, he wrote at length about the relationship between reality, which was about the Prince gaining personal power, and appearance, which was about convincing people to give over their power to the Prince. The ability to do what was necessary in both reality and appearance amounted to virtu and made The Prince a seminal work that is still read 500 years after publication.
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Research Paper Doctorate
Stephen Covey vs. Ram Charan: Habits and Effectiveness
Effective Habits and Getting Things Done:
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Thesis Undergraduate
The Great Gatsby: Reinvention and the American Dream
"The 1920s were characterized by conservatism, affluence, and cultural frivolity, yet it was also a time of social economic and political change. The first modern decade in American history paved the way for the reforms of the 1930s. American popular culture began to reflect an urban, industrial, consumer oriented society" (Ingui, 89). The strong economic boom following the Great War gave birth to a time known as "The Roaring 20's. This was a prosperous era, characterized largely by wealth and change. "President Calvin Coolidge declared that the business of America was business. In many ways, his statement defined the 1920s. Amid all the tensions, an unprecedented flood of new consumer items entered the marketplace, and progressive calls for government regulation were rejected in favor of a revival of the old free enterprise individualism" (Hermansen).
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Research Paper Doctorate
Locke and Rousseau on Inequality: Nature vs. Civil Society
Locke and Rousseau on the Question of Inequality
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Paper Doctorate
Death of a Salesman: American Dream and Family Failure
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is about a sad salesman, Willy Loman has spent his entire adult life in sales, with little success, but always believing affirming that a man who is well-liked is always successful.
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Research Paper Doctorate
Ideal Wife in Qing Dynasty and Revolutionary China
The treatment of women in China has long been a subject of debate. The strict traditional views have restricted the rights and privileges of Chinese women form many years. For the purposes of this discussion, we will…
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Research Paper Doctorate
Alexander the Great: Conquests, Army, and Legacy
King Philip II did not leave his son Alexander's destiny to chance. He had the boy learn how to play the lyre, recite and debate and placed him under the tutorship of no less than Aristotle (Smitha 1998), so that…
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Research Paper Doctorate
Pharmaceutical Industry's Impact on the U.S. Economy
In the September 01, 2005 issue of Pharmaceutical Executive, it was reported that the overall global industry growth has to slowed to single digit rates: 2004 global dollar volume was $550 billion, a 7% increase over…
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Paper Undergraduate
IT Strategy, Google, and the Debate Over Web Intelligence
Nicholas Carr is a former editor of the Harvard Business Review and made a second career for himself by releasing a controversial book titled Does IT Matter? Based on one of his final article written for the review.
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